Nilanjan Chakraborty’s research interests are in robotics, artificial intelligence, dynamical systems, and applied optimization. He is interested in developing capabilities for robots that will allow them to work robustly and reliably with or without human teammates and to enable long-term autonomy in robotic systems. He specializes in developing contact dynamics-based algorithms for manipulation planning, algorithms for robot motion planning, and algorithms for distributed planning in multi-robot systems.

Nilanjan Chakraborty joined the Mechanical Engineering Faculty at Stony Brook University in the Fall of 2014. His research interests are in robotics, artificial intelligence, dynamical systems, and applied optimization. He is interested in developing capabilities for robots that will allow them to work robustly and reliably with or without human teammates, and enable long-term autonomy in robotic systems. He specializes in developing algorithms for robot manipulation planning, robot learning from demonstrations, multibody contact dynamics, and distributed planning for multi-robot systems. His work finds applications in assistive robotics, flexible low-volume high-mix manufacturing, and automation of scientific discovery. 

He is a member of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society and ASME. He has served in editorial roles and also as reviewers of multiple leading robotics journals and conferences. He currently serves as an Associate Editor of the International Journal of Robotics Research and the Journal of Robotics and Mechanisms, Transactions of the ASME. He is the conference chair of the 50th Mechanisms and Robotics Conference at ASME IDETC 2026. He was a recipient of the Best Paper Award (Computer Systems Technical Group) at the Annual Meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society in 2013 and the Best Student Paper Award at Robotics: Science and Systems Conference in 2007.